Supporting All Learners

As a student, Mr Jeyaram Kadivan used to dread English Language lessons. He struggled with the language and even failed the subject in school. Today, he helps young people to find a love for the language and to succeed where he failed.

Article highlights

How can we help dyslexic students with language learning?

Can customized learning materials benefit other students as well?

How can allied educators work with teachers to support learning?

Jeyaram – or Mr Ram, as he is known in school – is an Allied Educator (AED) at St Gabriel’s Secondary School, which is a resource school for dyslexia support.

Ram’s role is to support students with this learning disability and the teachers who teach them. He advises teachers, helps in classroom teaching, and also conducts one-to-one or small-group intervention programmes to help those with more challenging learning needs.

Creating a Love for Language

Students with dyslexia hate to read or write. Because this group of learners often has difficulties comprehending what they read, the first thing Ram tries to do is to create a love for language in them.

“Children with special needs tend to fall backwards because despite them getting all that support, it may not be that concrete,” he notes. To get them to learn and improve, he needs to increase their motivation. “They need to see success in their work,” he says.

Ram carefully designs a variety of materials to help them grasp both the content and literacy skills. To make sure they don’t lag behind their peers, he chooses topics that are aligned with the English Language curriculum.

So if the topic is advertisements, they may get a cloze passage and a comprehension passage about ads. They’ll also look at ads, talk about them, and even design their own.

It may take up to 4 weeks to complete a topic, but Ram is in no hurry. He takes his time to make sure his learners understand the topic and to make it meaningful to them.

“The philosophy I adopt is that they don’t get homework here. It’s fun,” shares Ram. “I really go at their level and take time to finish every period.”

Universal Design for Learning

While his work is specialized, Ram has always adopted an all-encompassing approach: “Support everyone as much as possible.”

Sometimes, it turns out that some of those identified as special needs students don’t have a learning disability but a learning difficulty.

Children with special needs tend to fall backwards…. They need to see success in their work.

– Mr Jeyaram Kadivan, St Gabriel’s Secondary School

“Because they come from a family where their mother tongue is the most utilized language at home, that becomes an issue in school. Because they are not conversing in English, and because our teaching mode is all in English, they are struggling.”

Ram found that a “universal” approach to teaching and learning is useful for students like these. Research in “universal design for learning” (or UDL) has shown that curriculum materials designed for special needs students can also be used for the general student population, and everyone can benefit from it.

It’s really about teaching at the level of the student and communicating knowledge in a way that they can relate to and understand.

“It’s useful for Normal (Technical) classes, where there are that small group of kids who are falling through the sieve, where they are not really diagnosed with a disability. But it’s going to benefit them because it’s so simplified and concrete, and the terms used are based on the curriculum,” explains Ram.

It wasn’t until much later that he learned that researchers have given this approach a name. “We were naturally doing it, but we never knew there was a full-blown model and philosophy behind it.”

Sharing in Success

As an AED, Ram is not trained to teach. His primary role is to support teaching and learning. To better equip himself, Ram took up a course on teaching English by the British Council last year. He also reads up on learning strategies and research materials to stay up-to-date.

Support everyone as much as possible.

– Ramon his approach to teaching

“I felt that I really needed to know curriculum to teach them what they need. It’s not just about giving them a tool and saying, ‘You have to do this,’ but why they are doing it, how they are doing it. You really have to scaffold them and do it step by step.”

Ram is also involved in the school’s professional learning community (PLC). “I work closely with the Secondary 1 and 2 teachers in the English department, to understand what the changes in curriculum are. That keeps me abreast about what’s happening and how I can prepare these boys for the new information that they require.”

This understanding helps him to better differentiate the materials he designs for his students, to cater to their specific ways of learning.Ram has found it helpful to share the load with fellow teachers in the PLC or school cluster. He recently collaborated with three others schools to design lesson materials. “We were sharing resources, and now I have Secondary 1 to 4 materials with me but I only did one set!”

It takes a lot of commitment but the effort pays off long into the future. “It’s basically the mindset,” stresses Ram. “You have to start small. The initial stage will always be very difficult, but as you develop the material, it’s saved up in your bank and you can utilize it again.”

Allies in Education

Ram is among a group of specially trained allied educators who help to ease the burden of classroom teachers.

“We usually provide support in the class, mainly in helping teachers to focus on the weaker ones, and advising them on how to differentiate the material and how to make the lessons interesting.

“Students who have been identified with a learning disability will also meet with him twice a week, in groups of three to five. “I try not to have too many students because it turns into chaos! But I try not to have one because it gets very boring.”

Ram describes how he would approach a topic:

If the topic is on advertisements, I look for resource materials, and we think about how we are going to start off the lesson. Usually, it’s colour printouts and they get a picture, and they talk about it and share ideas. And then they watch YouTube video clips on adverts.

The idea is that every advert has an audience and purpose, and that’s the whole motive of writing.

They do a few, and it’s just fun! The initial questions would be: Look at this ad, where do you think it will appear? It’s just to know if they have the idea that this would appear in the Classifieds. If they don’t, it shows they don’t get exposed to newspaper articles.

Eventually, they do MCQs and all these are differentiated. Again, it’s all aligned to the curriculum. I use a lot of colours and not too many words. They get a cloze passage on adverts also. They really get a wide range of information on this particular topic.

And then they have to design a poster. We go through what are the key factors that are needed to design a poster. I give them an A3 paper and they pick out something and they do a poster.

Over time, there is less need to differentiate the materials. “By the time they reach Secondary 3 or 4, and there is no fear of language, we start exposing them to the real material,” notes Ram. “It’s just developing that love for language – that’s it.”

CAST
This website provides descriptions of the UDL principles and provides teachers with resources to expand learning opportunities for all individuals, especially those with disabilities, such as free learning tools, presentations, books and videos.

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